Xah's Edu Corner: Introduction to 3D Graphics Programing

[Jon Harrop]

Xah Lee wrote:
> Introduction to 3D Graphics Programing
> http://xahlee.org/3d/index.html

You will probably find it more rewarding to use a more modern graphics
system, such as OpenGL or DirectX, with a suitable programming language
rather than Mathematica's. I would recommend any of OCaml, F#, Haskell,
Lisp, Scheme, Python or Ruby for graphics, you can do much more
sophisticated, animated, real time visualisations than you can with
Mathematica's primitives.

There are lots of great web pages out there. I've written some 2D and 3D
graphics examples in OCaml:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/visualisation
  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/free/ray_tracer
  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/free/fractal
  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/free/maze

and more recently F#:

  http://www.ffconsultancy.com/dotnet/fsharp

I was very impressed with the tutorial videos on VPython at ShowMeDo:

  http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=pythonThompsonVPythonSeries

For an introduction to OpenGL, look no further than the NeHe tutorials at
GameDev:

  http://nehe.gamedev.net

One of our future products at FF Consultancy is a suite of extensions for
the F# interactive mode that allows you to visualise 2D and 3D graphics in
real time with simplicity rivalling Mathematica but the sophistication and
performance of DirectX, whilst also having the power of the F# programming
language and .NET to analyse your data.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/index.html?usenet